FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT COLLECTION AGENCY - PAGE 4

When Jeremy Carter was charged with trying to kill his mother and sister two years ago, he promised a juvenile court judge that he would turn his life around if he got a second chance. He got it, but on Saturday, the Lauderhill teen was back in police custody. Carter is accused of robbing a Barnett Bank branch just months after being released from a juvenile center where he served time for the attempted murders. Carter, 17, was being held at the Broward Regional Juvenile Detention Center on Sunday on a charge of robbery, Pompano Beach police spokeswoman Sandra King said.

One sure way for a governmental unit to lose credibility is to ask for more taxes while failing to collect large sums of money owed to it. The Palm Beach County Commission is doing just that, and is losing respect and credibility because of it. Before the commissioners and the county staff can expect favorable consideration of their request for a 1-cent local sales tax, they had better work very hard at collecting huge outstanding bills. Citizens can`t be expected to sympathize with the county`s needs when its accounts are in chaos.

Dear Greg: Last year I had a colonoscopy for which I am paying monthly [installments] after my insurance company paid its share. I had received two invoices – one from Digestive Care, the other from GastroCare – both with the same account number. I was put on a monthly payment plan for the balance of $1,330. I began payments in May 2010, putting both names on the check and including two payment slips. In February this year, I did not receive a statement from one and was waiting for it arrive before sending the checks.

The men, dressed in ties and business suits, walk into retail stores and pick out hundreds of dollars worth of small appliances, calling them gifts for their employees, detectives said. The men pay for the items with checks. But the checks, embossed "Perrin, Keil & Stern Co.," are no good; the company was dissolved months ago, detectives said. Lake Worth detective Jim Fitch is asking merchants in the county to beware: The men are con artists and very good ones. He and other detectives in the county are following leads, but police are having a difficult time catching the con men. The men have taken merchandise from stores in Boynton Beach, Lake Worth and near West Palm Beach.

Q. I took out a loan last year which requires me to make monthly payments until March 1998. As a single mother, I rely on alimony payments to help pay my bills. Recently, my ex-husband stopped making payments, making it difficult to pay all my bills. The company that gave me the loan has been calling me at all hours of the day and night demanding payments. Each time, I tell them that I am not able to pay at this time. I also asked them to stop calling me because they have been waking up me and my children.

The City Commission has agreed to move forward with a plan that could put stormwater and some residential garbage bills on the property tax bill as early as next year. If eventually given final approval, the change for garbage bills would affect most properties, with some exceptions such as apartment buildings and commercial customers. The stormwater fees would be including in the property tax bill for everybody. "We were having trouble with the collection area," said Vice Mayor Suzanne Boisvenue said Wednesday.

Right now, there are folks who cringe when their telephones ring. These people get a sick feeling knowing that the caller is likely a creditor trying to collect on an overdue bill. Much of the news lately has focused on people who are falling behind on their mortgages. But the fact is, other debts are bringing people down too. Americans are carrying $2.5 trillion in nonmortgage debt. In a recent column, I wrote about the rights granted to debtors under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which protects people from illegal collection tactics.

After watching unpaid fines pile up to at least $78 million over eight years, Broward County has decided to hire a collection agency to pursue the criminals and ticketed drivers who owe the money. Decades of lax enforcement allowed the IOUs to skyrocket, a problem common across the nation. The result: less money for state, county and city coffers, and that much more of a burden on taxpayers. A bill collector armed with giant computer databases could do better than the county in tracking at least 69,000 people who have not paid since Jan. 1, 1987, Broward officials said.

The city has started collecting about $800,000 in delinquent parking fines after realizing they had been adding up for years. The move has brought a flood of angry calls to the Police Department. Some people say they forgot about their tickets; others claim they didn't know they had gotten any. More than 20,000 unpaid violations have accumulated since 2001, when the city Finance Department began recording them in its books to keep better track. When officials realized last summer that the number of the unpaid fines and late fees had ballooned, they hired a collection agency to get people to pay up. The collection agency, Penn Credit Corp.

The city's new booting law will affect only about 14 vehicle owners who haven't resolved parking debts. The law requires a lock be strapped to a tire of vehicles whose owners have five or more unpaid parking tickets. To get the lock off, the vehicle owner will have to pay a $25 fee and pay off the fines. The new law has been endorsed by most of the city's power structure, including the City Commission, which voted 4-0 last month in favor of the measure, with Commissioner Alberta McCarthy absent from the vote.